Alive
by The Hermione Granger Fan Club
Summary: A standalone from a scene in one of my other fics- a depressed, reindoctrinated X5 thinks about the pain she carries with her.


Since she'd learned that kids were occasionally asked the question, all Cloe had wanted was for someone to say those ten expectant words to her. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  
  
"Alive," she longed to answer, with utmost seriousness.  
  
It was weird. Some days she felt like sinking to her skinny knees and shrieking, "Kill me, kill me now!" Other days the idea of not tasting air, not feeling jabs and pricks and pats, not living frightened the living daylights out of her. She'd open her eyes in the depths of the night (even when she wasn't sleeping, Cloe closed her eyes in bed), having been thinking about how that day hadn't been as awful as the rest of her life. Jesus, Cloe would think. One day I'm going to die.  
  
Cloe put her fingers to her mouth and bit down on a nail, tasting blood. She sucked her finger idly a few seconds before looking around the boring little cell.  
  
On the night of the escape she'd been caught quickly, even for her, and dragged back to base. Cloe wasn't so much flawed as she was weird. She was very into pain- Amna had come across her once, flicking happily at her knee with a letter opener and watching the blood flow.  
  
In 2009, at the worldly old age of ten, she'd had her first nervous breakdown. Ah, the memories. She'd tried to kill herself four times in three months, until the Colonel had sat her down and given her the Manticore equivalent of a stern fatherly lecture. He'd told her that if she did it again, he'd lock her down in the basement with the anomalies and she wouldn't die, no matter how much she wanted to. So Cloe had accepted that she wasn't permitted to die while she was still functioning.  
  
Amna had called her crazy, and it had stung even though Cloe had known she was right. "Jesus, Cloe, I got these horrible wrist scars in the escape and then you go doing the same thing to yourself on PURPOSE? Crazy girl."  
  
Still, Amna wasn't bad at all as a sister. She was sort of vicious and by far the best of the whole X5 class at martial arts, and sensible. Very, very sensible. Amna always thought three steps ahead.  
  
She only said Jesus because they'd heard adults say it all their lives. They didn't know that whole thing about taking the Lord's name in vain.  
  
She'd found that out after she'd bought a second-hand Bible on her first mission and stashed it in her room. It had taken her two nights to read the whole thing. She liked the descriptions of battles the best.  
  
They'd found it, inevitably, and hauled her into Psy-Ops for evaluation. Shockingly they'd had someone talk to her before all the blinding physical torture had begun. Cloe couldn't remember it too well but she supposed the woman must have been some kind of psychologist.  
  
"State your designation."  
  
"X5-619, ma'am."  
  
"Tell me about yourself, 619."  
  
Cloe had blanched. "There's nothing to tell."  
  
"Nothing at all?"  
  
"Well. I'm... I'm female. And I'm good with explosives."  
  
A sneer. "Yes, 619, I can see that you're female. Isn't there anything else?"  
  
"No. Nothing at all, ma'am. I'm one of many."  
  
"What do you like, then? What kind of food? Weather? Exercises?"  
  
Only one thing came into Cloe's mind. "Pain," she said, and grinned.  
  
The woman looked taken aback. "Pain?"  
  
"Yeah. Pain and blood."  
  
"Blood," said the woman with faint disbelief.   
  
"Yeah, blood. I like the release I get when I cut myself," said Cloe, and then remembered herself, adding, "Ma'am."  
  
She heard something over her head about how this could be connected to a disorder. Apparently the reason she liked pain was because it distracted her from the pain inside her.  
  
There had been pain after that, so much that Cloe couldn't bring herself to like it. Dull pain, the kind Cloe had never liked because it reminded her too much of the pain on the inside.  
  
The other kind of pain Cloe didn't enjoy was outside pain and inside pain at the same time, all at once, neither cancelling the other out, but just elevating, battling with each other to see which could destroy her first.  
  
Like when the others escaped. A single soldier had been pursuing her and Iria as they sped through the forest. She thought her heart would burst right through her ribs. She imagined offering it to their tormentor, screaming fiercely, "Are you happy now?"  
  
Cloe's feet, blue with cold and spurting icy blood, blurred as she ran and ran and ran. Iria sped along, maybe half a step in front, and Cloe stumbled and staggered and finally couldn't take it any more. Her exhaustion, more emotional than physical, caused Cloe to give up and collapse against a tree.  
  
"Don't kill me!" she wailed as the soldier stopped his snowmobile and walked over to her. She was crying. "D-Don't kill me, I want to live, I want to live, don't kill me!"  
  
All this came out in a ragged moan, but amazingly he heard her.  
  
He could hold her whole shoulder in his hand. He only had to push her the tiniest bit and she willingly went to the snowmobile and sat down on the backseat.  
  
Cloe shook with sobs. "Don't kill me," she begged.  
  
"Hey," he said comfortingly, looking troubled when her sobs came again, in waves. He reached for her face and automatically she whipped up a small, trained hand to fend him off. But instead of hitting her or touching her face like one of the doctors did (he always made her feel creepy, telling her all sorts of disturbing things), he patted her like a kitten.  
  
It was a compassionate gesture, but she flinched all the same. "You remind me of my little sister," he thought aloud.  
  
He climbed onto the snowmobile and gunned it, and as the base loomed she was suddenly swamped with misery. She could not let herself go back in there. Cloe would rather have died.  
  
She might have gone that way. She grabbed the soldier's gun off him and aimed it at herself. He turned around and yelled something. The gun in Cloe's determined hands went off, but it did not find its intended target. She shot him accidentally.  
  
The snowmobile swerved and crashed, but Cloe was thrown clear at the last second. She'd lunged up out of the snow, spitting ice, having gained a black eye- and saw the wreck of the snowmobile out of the corner of her eye, her heart sinking. And she still had to go back.   
  
They didn't make a big deal about her killing him. Lydecker only asked her once, as they were checking her over for injuries- "Why did you kill him, soldier?"  
  
"It was an accident, sir," she told him, and he didn't push it. He turned his back to talk with one of the doctors, and she swallowed, her eyes filling with tears. "I was aiming for me." This came out in a hoarse whisper, and Cloe couldn't be sure if he'd heard her.  
  
Whatever. Cloe had gotten onto the thumbnail now. It was about one in the morning and Cloe, twenty-one, sat at the foot of her bed. Someone else was in her bed.  
  
She didn't like people in her bed. She didn't like people's arms around her, weighing her down while she was trying to sleep. She didn't like the way the combined body heat seemed to drown her. Cloe didn't like the heat. She preferred the cold, even though it pierced her cruelly. Her feet in particular had a tendency to get very cold.  
  
Cloe knew that the eloquent thing to do would surely be to climb up into the top bunk. She felt indignant, though. It was her room, why didn't he damn well move?  
  
Her breeding partner. He was one of the Washington group, Jack's clone. She hadn't been able to stop looking at him- he'd been parading around the mess hall (well- if you called eating quietly 'parading around') with Eva and Krit's clones. It was creepy.  
  
They'd moved to Washington, all the remaining Wyoming X5s, when Cloe was in her early teens. She liked it better here- not so many memories of the others. Although watching the clones of the others, dead or escaped, grow up was very unsettling. She hadn't liked Jack and Eva's clones- thank Jesus (there he was again) they went on away missions so much. They didn't trust the Wyoming X5s as much, not even years after their reindoctrination. They certainly didn't trust her.  
  
He was asleep. He wasn't wearing a shirt and she studied him, not intimately as much as peacefully. Cloe shivered and casting around, spotted his grey Manticore issue sweatshirt lying on the floor. She swung her legs over the side of her cot, her bare feet scuffing on the floor, her knees tense. She bent down and picked up his sweatshirt, and hesitating, pulled it on over her nightclothes. She grimaced. Jesus, she'd just slept with him. She ought to be able to borrow his sweatshirt for a few hours without feeling guilty. He didn't need it right then, after all.  
  
Cloe's nightclothes were exactly the same as all the other X5 women's- the top was grey, with a staunch square neckline and long sleeves and the pants were long and, just for a change of pace, grey. They were exactly the same as the nightclothes she'd worn in Wyoming, except slightly bigger. Cloe had always been skinny.  
  
He was short for an X5 male, but then again Cloe was the shortest out of all the X5s.  
  
He'd gone straight to sleep after they'd (ha) 'copulated'. They'd spoken little and only kissed each other by accident. His voice, which she'd rarely heard in such silence, surprised her. Would Jack have sounded like that?  
  
Jesus, thinking about my brother at a time like this is about the weirdest thing I could do right now, thought Cloe, rolling her eyes. They were the glossy green of a fake plant's leaves.  
  
She couldn't ever be completely at peace. That annoyed her. Even when she was asleep she wasn't at peace.  
  
Cloe jammed her fingers into her mouth again and bit thoughtfully.  
  
It was raining, typically, and she heard the rain patter on the roof. Cloe relished that- she rarely heard sounds as soft and pretty as pattering rain, even when the rain fell.  
  
The cold still bit at her vulnerable arms, but she was starting to feel warm in the sweatshirt.  
  
Cloe couldn't work out whether she liked him or not. He was good-looking, sure, but they all were. Cloe had learnt at an early age to look deeper.  
  
Was he decent? Yeah. He knew how to laugh at himself. At the beginning, as they stood with their backs to each other, getting undressed, she'd heard him mutter, "Well, damn, this is awkward. I hardly know you and I'm worked up."  
  
"I'm sure you are," Cloe'd replied quietly.  
  
Even she wasn't sure why she did what she did next. Halfway through taking off her clothes Cloe turned around and walked to him. Frowning in concentration she gingerly put her hands on his shoulders, moving them pensively down and stopping abruptly at the small of his back.  
  
Cloe's partner turned around to look at her with mild surprise and Cloe remarked, "Jesus, your back muscles are like guitar strings. Loosen up, will you?"  
  
He started toward her and Cloe found herself backing away. "Turn around," he said simply.  
  
Very, very slowly, Cloe turned around and he returned the gesture. Incredibly, she didn't flinch or twitch even once. But her shoulders stayed rigid, her elbows resting strictly at the curve of her waist. Cloe's hands were cupped as if holding a bar, her fingertips beached on her pant legs some inches from her stiff knees. She stood straight, but constantly felt afraid he'd hit her over the head or something. Another kind of pain she didn't enjoy- when someone she trusted somewhat hurt her, whether inside or outside.  
  
Her head was cocked uneasily to the side and she was biting her lip violently. When Cloe felt him remove his hands she squirmed a bit, then rolled her head. Forward, to the left, dipping back and coming full circle. She sighed a little in relief while she did this. Quite without warning Cloe could sense he liked that- he thought her Happy Noise, as she'd named it wryly, was... was CUTE. Or sexy. Some ridiculous crap like that. She cursed herself inwardly, tense once more.   
  
"Well."  
  
"What?" she asked, aware she sounded sullen.  
  
"I'm not the only one in the room who's tense."   
  
She said nothing.   
  
"Listen, this is as awkward for me as it is for you, so let's just deny the world the satisfaction and stay friends after this."  
  
Cloe had an unreadable expression on her face. "I wasn't aware that we were friends before."  
  
He seemed embarrassed. "Well, screw all and let's stay on good terms."  
  
The barest flicker of a smile appeared on her lips. "Yeah, that's good for me."  
  
Cloe wasn't innocent and didn't pretend to be, although she did fuel most of her energy into masking every implication that he was having an effect on her, emotionally or otherwise. Kissing him, even just those couple of accidental times, was a puzzle. Kissing someone you had a thing for, Cloe decided, was definitely different to kissing someone you didn't like in that way. Or more accurately, someone you had every reason to feel attracted to but weren't allowing yourself to be.  
  
She didn't know. He interested her. More than that- when he was just there, sleeping, every little line of him, every even breath of him fascinated her.  
  
That was it. After what she'd been told to do with him, he fascinated Cloe. Maybe that could turn into a kindly feeling. With an emphasis on the maybe. It was pointless anyway.  
  
He woke up then. Slowly, inch by inch, he came back from his dreamworld and found her staring at him. She removed her stubs of nails from her mouth and considered him.  
  
"Are you OK?" he asked her sleepily.  
  
"Fine, X5-418," she assured. She called him by a designation. She called them all by a designation, even the ones she silently knew by names. Amna. Splint. Jace. Iria. Clay. Saul.  
  
She hesitated. "Call... call me Cloe, OK?" Even speaking her own name left a sour taste in her mouth. Such was the life of a reindoctrinated X5.  
  
He blinked. "All right."  
  
"Go back to sleep," she ordered him calmly.  
  
A smile. He was smiling at her. His smile was- pretty devastating. Even just a small smile, like that.   
  
And it was for her.  
  
"Come here, then. Here with me." He gestured to the biggish space beside him that he meant her to fill.  
  
Cloe felt suddenly heavy and tired. "OK. I'm cold anyway." Trying not to move anything at all, she crawled to the top of the bed. Before she lay down, he lifted the top of her blanket slightly, offering to let her under, but Cloe shook her head and lay down as she was.   
  
He put an arm around her shoulders to keep her warm. She thought about giving him a piercing look, but that would probably trigger a smile and Cloe didn't think she could handle another one. Not without smiling back. She settled for gazing into the dark far corner drowsily, her arms loosely wrapped around herself.  
  
They listened to the rain awhile, Cloe's thoughts raging.  
  
"How do you survive this life?" she said suddenly, thinking he'd fallen asleep again. Cloe didn't know who she was asking. Might as well have been the ceiling. "Without... without falling apart, I mean."  
  
He spoke. "Just being alive's enough for me," he yawned, and ran his fingertips lazily up and down her arm.  
  
* * *  
  
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to James Cameron and Fox. Not me. So don't sue.  
  
NOTE: *LAUGHS* I swear, I'm bloody obsessed with the escape, reindoctrination and the breeding programme. That's just me. I can dream up all sorts of incredible cliches to do with those.  
  
I really, really hope one of my relatives doesn't find this story, because Cloe is named after her daughter. I mean, no offence at all, I've never even MET the girl, I was just thinking up names for original X5s one day and Cloe came to mind, and then I characterised her and it FIT, somehow. I couldn't bring myself to change the name- regardless of the whole "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." dealio. But I'm sure that in a cruel twist of fate my female relative is gunna find this and really give me an earbashing. Now, everyone- my relative Cloe has NOT, repeat NOT ever killed anyone and isn't weird like my X5 Cloe.  
  
I do like weird, messed-up, badly-in-need-of-therapy, dear Cloe, however.  
  
I just introduced Cloe as an adult in the fifth chapter of my Big Project, 'The World Wants Me Gone' (hint... review, hint hint). I was in quite a Cloe mood so I decided to write this ficlet about her. She'll be showing up again in the Big Project, though...  
  
The songs I played while writing this were 'Here With Me' by Dido and 'Damaged' by TLC. *SNIFFLES* I'll never forget you, Left Eye! *BAWLS. EVERYONE LOOKS ON, APPALLED AT HER WUSSINESS. SHE MANAGES TO RECOVER, STILL WEEPY* Both those songs remind me of Cloe.  
  
The original Cloe is a background flashback X5 from ...AJBAC who may or may not be Syl. She's got this 'dorable round face with pixie ears and looks sort of bewildered. She definitely looks like a girl- at least, I hope she is! She went from blonde to redheaded to a brunette (for the simple reason that in the flashback pic she looks blonde, but then again most of the cute ickle flashback kiddies look blonde in that weirdo lighting, but then I decided that I wanted her hair to be some other colour) and I gave her green eyes 'cause, well, I like green eyes. 


End file.
